Margaret Wileman, former president of Hughes Hall in Cambridge, who lived through WW1 and WW2, dies aged 106

The former head of a Cambridge college - who lived through two world wars - has died aged 106.

Margaret Wileman was President of Hughes Hall for two decades, between 1953 and 1973, and an honorary Fellow for the past 30 years.

Living close by, off Hills Road, she maintained her interest in the college until her final days, even attending its summer garden party last month.

Academically distinguished and with a wide range of talents - as an artist, musician and poet - Miss Wileman left Oxford with a First in Modern Languages in 1930. She trained as a teacher in the Oxford Department of Education, and during the war lectured at St Katharine’s College Warrington, now part of Liverpool Hope University, and then for 10 years was a resident warden at Bedford College in London.

During vacations both during and after the war, she worked in refugee camps and girls’ borstals.

When she arrived at Hughes Hall in October 1953 at the age of 45, it was an all-female college with a maximum of 70 students, the smallest in the university.

A college spokesman said: “The college fabric was essentially Victorian, with an ambience of genteel poverty. Pat Story, who came to Hughes Hall as a student in 1953, and is now a Life Fellow of the college, arrived to find that her room had no carpet, just a white-painted chest of drawers and a small food locker which contained one pot of orange marmalade, one pot of blackcurrant jam, 1lb of sugar and 2oz of butter.”

Under Miss Wileman’s leadership Hughes Hall went on to expand, and in her final year, 1973, men were admitted to the college. Today, thanks to the foundations she laid, Hughes Hall is a full college of Cambridge University with 600 students.

In her long retirement Miss Wileman, a devout Roman Catholic, maintained strong links with the college and, along with Sister Gregory Kirkus, ran education programmes for Catholic women from around the world. An accomplished musician, she regularly attended events of the college Music Society, which now bears her name.

In 2000, the French government appointed her Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques in recognition of her services to French literature.

Current Hughes Hall President Sarah Squire said: “Margaret played an extraordinary role in the life of this college for over 60 years, and it was wonderful the way that she continued her lively and intelligent interest in our doings right up until the end of her long life. We shall all miss her cheerful smile.”